Toby Lived Here

by Hilma Wolitzer

  When the mail came, there wasn’t even a birthday card. In the old days they always made cards for one another, instead of giving the commercial ones her mother said weren’t personal enough and couldn’t express your private feelings. Toby would have settled for one of those now if it had come. At least it would have let her know that her mother was thinking of her and hadn’t forgotten her birthday.

  Miss Vernon sent a card, and there were others from Constance and Arnie, from Uncle Ralph, a few from friends of her mother’s, and one from Rita, all with cheery verses about having fun on her day, and with illustrations of teenagers riding bikes or dancing to phonograph music.

  There was going to be a birthday breakfast in her honor and Susan had been invited. But Toby was hardly able to get out of bed that morning. Lying there, she could hear early preparations, secrets whispered, and Anne running heavily up and down the stairs.

  When Toby looked in the bathroom mirror, her toothbrush in her hand, she realized she looked a little the way Constance had in those first photographs. At least, her expression was like that-angry and sorrowful at once. She thought of all the letters she had sent, their envelopes decorated with flowers and X’s for kisses. No matter how her mother felt, she could have answered once, just once, couldn’t she? Even a short note that said, Hello, I got your letter. Toby brushed her teeth so furiously that her gums ached afterwards. She splashed water on her face and then looked into the mirror again and found that same belligerent expression.

  As she came downstairs, Anne started yelling from the kitchen, “Don’t come in, Toby! Stay out!”

  She peeked in anyway and saw that the table was beautifully set. There were packages and envelopes at her place, and half grapefruits with beribboned pipe cleaners arched across them, so they looked like baskets of fruit. A few balloons were tied to the light fixture.

  “Get out!” Anne shrieked, and Toby retreated to the living room.

  Jim and Sylvia said good morning and happy birthday and Toby thanked them and accepted kisses on her forehead and cheek. Then she sat down to wait for Susan, who was coming at ten o’clock. It was going to be a very hot day. Already the air was still and humid and her shirt was sticking to her back. Yet, in some deep place inside her, Toby felt a coldness, a small chill of knowledge that was waiting to surface.

  I won’t even think, she told herself. If you wanted to, you could control your own thoughts. She was glad when the doorbell rang and Susan was there. She carried a flat package with a huge bow on it; all over the gift paper were the words TEEN TEEN TEEN. “You lucky thing,” Susan said. “Happy birthday, Tobe.” She wouldn’t be thirteen until October.

  Everyone went to the table and Anne insisted that Toby open the cards from her first. They were handmade and busy with drawings and poems. Anne sat across from Toby, her feet hooked around the legs of her chair, her chin in her hands. She stared eagerly at her sister, trying to assess her reaction to the cards.

  Toby forced herself to smile, to act pleased.

  But Anne still wasn’t satisfied. “Don’t you like it?” she asked each time. “Do you really like it? It took me two days to color it in.”

  Toby smiled even wider, wondering if it looked like a smile or a grimace of pain, and that small cold ball was still there inside her, waiting.

  Sylvia looked sharply at her as she served the pancakes. “Do you feel all right, Toby?” she asked, and Toby felt a rage at her for asking, and at herself for being unfair. “Sure,” she said, her own voice sounding rude and ungrateful. She stabbed the stack of pancakes in front of her and cut them. Then she put a large piece into her mouth and began to chew. That feeling was getting worse, rising up into her throat, making it difficult to breathe. The chewed pancakes were like flannel in her mouth and she couldn’t swallow them. She washed them down with a gulp of milk and choked a little. Sylvia pounded her on the back, and then she went into the pantry and brought out the cake. Toby had smelled it baking the night before, had heard Anne’s loud whispers about it from the kitchen. It was a lovely cake, decorated with flowers and swans and fourteen candles glowing palely in the bright room. One for good luck.

  “Make a wish,” Anne ordered, and Toby shut her eyes and wished it was Anne’s birthday instead of hers, that she could be upstairs in her bedroom now reading Jane Eyre, and she wished that the coldness inside her would go away.

  She blew out the candles and everyone cheered and sang “Happy Birthday” to her. She opened her presents: two records from Susan that she had wanted so much only a week ago, a new blouse from Sylvia and Jim, and a Linda Ronstadt song-book from Anne, who promptly told her how much it had cost. She thanked everyone and tried to seem happy, but it was no use.

  Sylvia felt her forehead and wondered if she was getting sick. Glad for a reasonable excuse for her behavior, Toby said yes, that her head ached and she felt a little dizzy. What was another lie in that endless series of lies?

  At least it freed her. Susan went home and Toby was urged to go upstairs, where she had wished she could be before she blew out the candles. But she didn’t open Jane Eyre when she got there. Instead, she lay on her back with her arms folded behind her head, and felt the coldness expand in her chest. It was no longer possible to hold back her thoughts. I hate her. I hate my mother. The knowledge was so terrible and swift that she gasped. And now that she had allowed herself to think those words, the others came in a rush. I hate her and she must hate me. If she didn’t, Toby wouldn’t be here. They would be somewhere else and together. All the letters Toby had written. All the times she had waited near the mailbox and listened to the teasing of the postman. I hate her. It was because of her that she had told so many lies to Susan, one lie after another, so that she hardly knew the truth herself any more. I hate her.

  Toby didn’t care about anything, not the gifts, not the party, not even about being thirteen. Her mother had spoiled everything. Nothing would ever be right again.

  Someone was knocking at her door. She waited a moment, hoping whoever it was would think she was asleep. But the knocking continued. “Who is it?” she asked.

  “It’s me,” Sylvia said. “May I come in, Toby?” And when Toby didn’t answer, she opened the door and walked in. “Are you feeling any better?”

  Toby found she couldn’t speak. She shook her head.

  Sylvia sat down on the chair near the bed. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  “About what?” Toby said, but her voice squeaked, the way it did sometimes when she lied.

  “About what’s bothering you,” Sylvia said. “You can’t keep it all inside.”

  But she could. And she would.

  “That’s what she did, you know,” Sylvia said.

  “Who?” Toby whispered.

  “Your mother.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her,” Toby said, and her throat ached.

  “It would help, Toby. Believe me.”

  “I hate her,” Toby said. For the first time, her voice was clear and loud. She had said it. She looked defiantly at Sylvia, expecting her to be shocked.

  But Sylvia only looked concerned. She pushed a loose hairpin into her bun. “It’s time,” she said.

  “For what?” Toby asked.

  “For you to visit your mother.” When Toby didn’t speak, she continued. “Maybe you should have done it before this. I don’t know. But I’ll call Miss Vernon this afternoon and see what we can arrange.”

  “Sylvia?” Toby said.

  “What, dear?”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “I know,” Sylvia said. “But it’s even scarier when you don’t know what’s happening. I’ll go with you if you want me to.”

  Toby nodded. “And Anne?” she asked.

  “We’ll see,” Sylvia said.

  18

  A WHOLE WEEK PASSED after the telephone call to Miss Vernon. Sylvia explained to Toby that Miss Vernon had spoken to a psychiatric social worker at the hospital, who promised to check into the matter. Fina
lly, they received permission to visit.

  They decided to take Anne along, too, and Toby was glad about that. Walking on the hospital grounds with Sylvia beside them, the sisters held hands, and for once Anne didn’t wriggle hers or pinch.

  There were several buildings and they weren’t white and modern. And of course there was no outdoor swimming pool. Looking up, Toby could see bars at some of the windows, but the approach to the main entrance was parklike, with trees and grass and plantings of bright flowers.

  It was Sunday, and there were many other visitors, some of them walking toward the same building and carrying gifts in boxes and shopping bags. People were already visiting outdoors, patients and their friends sitting together on benches, or strolling arm-in-arm in the shade of the trees. Some of the patients were difficult to distinguish from their friends. Others were quiet and seemed groggy, as if they had just been awakened from a deep sleep for this visit. Nobody looked like Mrs. Rochester here, but Toby wondered about the ones up there behind the bars, the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t come out.

  She had imagined the worst the night before. First, she thought of a prison movie she had seen, where visitors had to talk to the inmates in a tiny cell with a window between them. They spoke into microphones. One man and his wife had kissed, their lips and fingers touching only the pane of glass that separated them. Then she pictured an old castle with dank dungeons, dreary and isolated and in a barren landscape. There the prisoners were chained and hung by their wrists from dripping walls.

  If the hospital wasn’t as attractive as she had once described it to Susan, at least it was not as horrible as her recent fantasies. The worst thing was that being here meant being apart from people you loved and who loved you.

  Toby was frightened. The sunshine, the tranquillity of the scene, could not really calm her fears. Her palms were wet and she released Anne’s hand for a moment to rub her own on her jeans.

  Sylvia had told them their mother would be inside, that they would visit her in a place called a dayroom. Didn’t anyone ever go there at night?

  A receptionist took their names and their mother’s name, then swiveled in her chair and referred to a card in a filing cabinet. They had to wait while she telephoned somebody in another building to announce their arrival. It was like going to see someone very important or famous. Toby put her hand against the frantic leaping of her heart.

  In a few minutes they were told to go ahead. Two buildings away, the receptionist said. Main floor, Corridor B. They went out again, past a building with a large porch completely surrounded by a wire fence. There were people inside and Toby thought of what her mother had said about caged animals. Her legs were weak, as if she had run all the way from 63rd Drive. But Jim had driven them there, up to the gate, and then driven away again. He and Sylvia had decided that two strangers would be too much for Toby and Anne’s mother this first time with her children. And Toby was reminded that they had never met, except in her daydreams, where they were all great friends.

  She breathed very deeply, then let the air out with a wheezing sigh, and Sylvia looked at her and smiled, the way her mother used to before a visit to the dentist. As if to say, Maybe it will only hurt a little bit.

  Anne was nervous, too. She kept moving her thumb up to her chin and down again to the pocket of her shorts. They had brought presents for their mother. Anne’s was a clay ashtray made in Arts and Crafts at the summer-school playground. It was a bear lying on his back, his stomach hollowed out to receive the ashes. Toby thought it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. And, besides, their mother didn’t even smoke. She didn’t say anything about that to Anne, though.

  Her gift was a scarf that reminded her of her mother as soon as she saw it in the store. The colors were cheerful, and the design modern and bold. Constance had gone shopping with her. And the day before, she had taken them to the beauty parlor where she worked and given them egg shampoos and special cream rinses before she trimmed their hair. She painted Anne’s fingernails and toenails a deep rose pink.

  They came to the right building and went inside. Following signs, they found Corridor B. Two men walked past in striped bathrobes, with a nurse between them holding their arms. They seemed confused, as if they had lost their way. It was over four months since their mother had seen Anne and Toby. What if she didn’t recognize them? Maybe they had changed even more than Toby realized. Anne certainly looked different with that comical gap where her teeth had been. The new ones were just starting to come in, looking as if they would be as big and as white as Chiclets. And what about all the changes that had taken place inside herself? Her new anger and fear. Would they be visible on the outside, too?

  The thing that worried Toby the most, though, was that she might not recognize her mother. It was silly. Not enough time had passed for them to have become strangers. Had it? But she knew how difficult it was to recall her father’s face, how quickly he was disappearing from memory. Then Sylvia said, “Here we are, girls.” The dayroom was a large place with soft couches and chairs facing in different directions. There were several people there, patients and their families and friends, attendants in white uniforms moving among them. There was a low hum of conversation.

  She was sitting almost in the center of the room, in a deep chair. But she sat on the very edge of the seat, leaning forward, her dark blue eyes fixed on the doorway. She was wearing a blue skirt and a white blouse, and her hair had been cut to shoulder-length. She did look different—Toby wasn’t sure how. But it was her.

  There was an uproar of joy in Toby’s chest. She dropped Anne’s hand and went forward, almost as if she had been pushed.

  Her mother stood at the same moment. She looked very small standing up, like a child herself. And then she was blurred with motion as she moved toward them.

  It seemed they would come together, all three of them, with an impact like the crash of automobiles. But, at the last moment, it was cushioned and gentle. Everyone spoke at once.

  “Mommy!”

  “Mother...I...”

  “Oh, Toby. Anne.”

  Toby, feeling and smelling her mother’s hair under her own nostrils, realized she was now the taller one.

  “Let me look,” her mother said. “Oh, God.” And she hugged them again. “Your teeth,” she said to Anne. “Look at you, Toby. Lovely, lovely.”

  All that time, Sylvia stood behind them, holding the presents, her pocketbook looped over her arm.

  The children and their mother moved, almost as one, to a sofa in a far corner, away from other people. She could not stop touching them. And she had begun to weep. She didn’t even bother to hide it. The tears streaked her face and made her eyes look dazzling in the sunny room.

  Toby had planned things to say, polite, careful little speeches to hide behind, and was dismayed now to find she couldn’t speak at all. Her own tears flooded over, and she let them go, leaning into her mother’s chest and sobbing as she had not done since her father’s death.

  It was too much for Anne, who set up her own wailing, louder and higher-pitched than theirs. Other people turned to look at them, and an attendant started across the room. But Sylvia stayed him with her hand, and spoke to him. Toby saw this as she wiped her eyes. She felt exhausted but strangely peaceful.

  Then her mother laughed and said, “I needed you. How I needed you! Oh, my girls.”

  When they were all calm again, they sat for a while and talked about what had happened to Toby and Anne during their separation. They spoke about school, about new friends, about Constance and Arnie. Finally Anne said, “You never wrote to us. I made you a card.”

  “I know you did, baby,” their mother said. “I have it. I saved everything. And all your beautiful letters, Toby.”

  “Then why didn’t you write back?” Toby asked in a small voice, afraid to spoil this fine mood between them, but needing the truth so much she had to risk it.

  “I was too sad,” her mother said. “These last couple of weeks, I tried to wr
ite to you a few times. But I tore the letters up. I could never seem to say all the things I felt. I kept thinking, I’ll tell them when I see them. Before that, I took medicine and I slept a lot. I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t even cry.”

  “But you never cried!” Toby said.

  “I know. I had to learn how. I had to come here to learn how. Isn’t that crazy?”

  The word was there in the room with them. Crazy. But it didn’t have the same meaning any more. Their mother held their hands in her own. She was thinner, Toby could see that now. Her face was graver and somehow older. The constant gaiety Toby remembered was gone, from her eyes, from her gestures,

  Then she thought of Sylvia, who had been standing at a polite distance all this time, without saying anything. Toby jumped up and brought her forward. “Mother, this is Sylvia, Mrs. Selwyn, who takes care of us.”

  The two women shook hands and their mother thanked Sylvia in a hoarse voice, and then began to cry a little, almost starting Toby off again. She couldn’t believe it. All that sorrow to come to this moment of happiness. Because she was happy now, and so was Anne, who unwrapped her own gift to her mother and admired it before anyone else could.

  “I’ll keep buttons in it,” their mother said. “I love it. I love you.” She put the scarf Toby had given her around her neck, tying it jauntily on one side, and Toby knew she had made a good choice.

  Then it was time to leave. The attendants moved among them, quietly announcing the end of visiting hours.

  Toby hadn’t even asked the main question. But she didn’t have to. Her mother said, “I still need a little more time. I can’t help it, Toby. I’m glad you’re both in such a good place, with good people. You know I want to be with you, but I can’t. Not yet. Do you understand?”

  Toby was disappointed. When she had seen her mother looking and acting so well, she thought they would be making plans to be together again right away.

  “You can come back here soon,” her mother said. “And I’ll write to you. I promise I will. And I’ll be visiting you one of these days. Okay, Toby?”